"Liberty is not a means to a political end. It is itself the highest political end." -Lord Acton

Friday, May 06, 2005

I'm asking for it.

Lead paragraph of a final paper I submitted today:The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State exposes the exploitation, in the author’s view, of a vast class of workers: adult females. In this slim work, Frederick Engels – best known for his collaboration with Karl Marx on The Communist Manifesto – charges the modern capitalist system with the subjugation of women. Engels’ alternative: a society whose members share property, children, and all forms of labor. The realization of this communist vision means no less than the eradication of family life as we know it. Not surprisingly, Engels would welcome such a calamitous upheaval. Calamitous it would surely be, however; for capitalism, by fostering self-sufficient domestic units, affords women far greater freedom and status than imaginable under communism.Incidentally, this was the essay topic:

Is the oppression of women due to the existence of private property? Use Engels' Origin of the Family as the point of departure of your argument.

3 comments:

Maybe you can top this comment i got after during in a paper about political inequality:

"This is well written and nicely organized. You make a good argument for limiting political power. However, do you think limiting political power necessarily leads to less dominance and inequality? It does seem that undue power can be exercised by market forces too, and part of the purpose of politics is to put a limit on the power of the market."

I always seem to forget to take those assumtion into account. In any case, good luck.